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In 1973, American Thoroughbred Secretariat stormed through the horse racing ranks. The chestnut brown stallion won the Kentucky Derby, Preakness Stakes and Belmont Stakes, all in record times that still stand today, to take home the sport’s Triple Crown, the first to do so in 25 years.
In October 2014, Alabama head coach Nick Saban made a trio of references to the all-time great horse in the days leading up to and immediately after his Crimson Tide’s win over Texas A&M.
“We’re really trying to focus on our players, playing hard, completing well, having fun playing football,” Saban said last Wednesday. He went on to talk about the champion horse and its owners.
“They had so much pressure on them because of their debt and the horse had to win the Triple Crown, the anxiety and the tension and all that, and finally she just said, ‘Let the horse run,’ and it won by 31 lengths at the Belmont,” Saban said. “Well, that’s what we’re trying to let our guys do, just let them run. Just let them play.”
On Saturday against the Aggies, that’s exactly what the coach did. There was nothing fancy about the Crimson Tide offense. According to the coach, he just rolled the ball out and told his players to just play.
“Sometimes you get people so tight and so tensed up and anxious that they don’t play with the kind of personality they’re capable of. That’s something we’ve been working on since the Ole Miss game. I think our players responded to it and I think they’re having more fun playing, which is really what we want them to do,” Saban said.
Apparently, this laissez-faire approach to game day has a lot to do with Saban being “pissed off,” as he told reporters last week, about outside expectations of his team.
“I think these guys really want to do the right thing, I think they really want to be good,” Saban said at halftime of the Texas A&M game. “Sometimes, maybe they don’t know how and I think that my standing up for them, sometimes that gives them a little confidence.”
There you have it.
Under Lane Kiffin’s direction, the Alabama offense had become something that it wasn’t at any other time under Saban. They spread the field out, they tried to get throws out quickly and, in a concept foreign to Alabama’s faithful, they struggled to run the ball. That’s not to condemn anything Kiffin has done in his months in Tuscaloosa, or to say that Alabama can’t be successful with him holding the play sheet; remember how good they were in the first third of the year?
Against Texas A&M, though, that’s not what Alabama looked like.
Much of the Tide’s success stemmed from the Aggies not being anywhere near ready for the physicality Alabama brought to the game. The Crimson Tide ran at, over and around A&M. Blake Sims still made quick throws, but they were all accurate and in rhythm. Nothing crazy, just what looked like your typical Alabama football game. Whether the simplification and reversion to a power attack stemmed from a conversation between Kiffin and Saban or a Saban edict, it doesn’t matter.
To hear Saban tell it, the credit for the way the team played lands with him. The coach preached all week about having his team relax, that they had been playing tight and anxious for two weeks. He intimated last that some of that fell away in the fourth quarter against Arkansas, starting with Sims’ failed quarterback sneak on a fourth down attempt early in the quarter.
“I was really pleased, Blake didn’t do the quarterback sneak right. I really saw our players help him and support him,” Saban said after the game. “He made a mistake. That was good. We needed that on our team. That’s been missing on our team.”
Huh? Saban, saying a mistake was good for his team? It wasn’t the mistake he liked, though, but how his team reacted to it. Landon Collins sealed the game with a late interception, and the Crimson Tide let loose celebrating with their defensive leader. Saban was happy with the way they handled the situation, trailing deep into the game.
“From an intangibles standpoint, our players played hard and overcame a lot of adversity,” he said.
That looseness carried over into the week of practice and into the Texas A&M game. Seeing Crimson Tide players bounce up and down on the sidelines in the midst of a blowout, as they did against the Aggies, isn’t something folks are accustomed to seeing. Saban’s past teams have come across as buttoned-up, business-like football machines. Perhaps this year’s team was attempting to live up to those standards, and as a result they put out efforts like the loss to Ole Miss and the narrow win against Arkansas. Perhaps it took that failed fourth quarter sneak for this Alabama team and Saban to embrace what they are.
Saban said he empowered his team, then let them run loose on Saturday. If 59-0 is what the Crimson Tide look like when their coach lets go of the reins, the rest of the nation should be ready for the stampede.
A former freelance journalist from Philadelphia, Brett has made the trek down to SEC country to cover the greatest conference in college football.
